part three

16. my ambition to become a mother
17. my ability to be honest with myself
18. my appreciation for the human being
19. my cheery demeanor
20. my love language
21. the ability i have to heal others through touch
22. my hug

(part two)

this is a very difficult task, i don't know if i can do it.

12. the history of my hair
13. my sci fi tendencies
14. my love for saige, charlie and cadence
(edit)
15. my persistence (knowing something is difficult but not giving up :-p )

A Healing Exercize

101 Things That I Would Not Change About Myself (part one)

1. the color of my eyes
2. how intensely I love people (even when it sucks)
3. the compassion that I feel
4. the number of people tucked inside my suitcase heart
5. my handwriting
6. my singing voice. i would not change it for better or worse.
7. my determination to improve
8. the ability I have to empathize with others
9. the courage I have to wake up every day and get out of bed
10. the freckles on my shoulders
11. the way autumn smells to me

the battle.

it was awful, and then it was more awful, and then it was not so awful, and then it was brilliant! and then, i had to start thinking about doing it again, and it was awful.

are you here looking for honesty?

If you're here today looking for art, you won't find any. Today is one of those days where I can't swallow the truth inside me any longer. I feel like I am choking to death on the reality that is, that I can't say out loud. Because let's be honest, who wants to hear it?

My life thus far, as short as it's been, has been kind of sucky. My experiences with love, with sex, with all those wonderful firsts that you're supposed to anticipate with twirling whirling butterflies, and experience in their own time, were ruined. Those firsts were stolen from me.

And now... let's just say that some days are harder than others.

Today is a hard one. Not because I'm feeling sorry for myself, longing for a life that is normal, or easier. Not tonight. Tonight I sit here with determination on my fingertips. I plan to share with you something that I have not wanted to share with anyone, something no one should ever have to share.

I have experience with abuse. This is not my secret, not anymore, but part of a necessary explanation that needs to come first. In the past year and a half or so, I have been slowly, steadily recovering memories of that past that for a time I knew nothing of. They are becoming a part of me again, these memories, and sometimes, for a while, I allow them to control me, rather than controlling them. Well tonight dear readers, I am taking control.

I recovered a memory some months ago of being drowned. Tortured actually, the technical term for what happened to me is called water-boarding. I was held under water in a bathtub until I lost consciousness and then I was revived. Over. And over. And over.

Now for my secret: I have not been able to step foot in a bathtub since I discovered this memory. That was months ago. I wash my hair in the sink, painfully. I put on deodorant, I apply lotion, but I have not been able to bring myself to bathe. I cannot stand the way it feels to touch my skin. Part of me feels like I don't deserve to be clean. And then there is the part of me that wants to faint at the sound of running water, the part of me that swims through a dark cloud of haze when she feels water on her arms. My feet are filthy. I stink. My clothes stink. My skin is one giant blotch of acne. I am disgusting. I am terrified.

Tonight, I am taking back my body. I am taking back my memory. I am taking back my dignity. I will no longer allow this memory to control me. I will get in the bathtub and wash every ounce of crud off of my skin. I will stay in the bathtub, until the water goes cold, and then I will drain the water and run new water and do it again. I will stay in the water until I am no longer afraid, just bored. And then I will do it again tomorrow. And the next day. And every day until I am whole again.

I can beat this. I will beat this. I WIN.

a quote from a very brave woman. i am completely inspired.

"The idea for this came to me after speaking with a therapist who had worked for many years in a secure unit.

She explained the way that people who are psychologically very powerful (and abusive) break down other people and gain control over them. Their intention is to destroy the connections (synapses) in your brain. At a very basic level, these connections are linked to your ability to move. But also, very interestingly, these connections are linked to your individual thought processes, which are individual to you (and which are collectively your consciousness).They sever other connections too: thought-feeling and mind-body.

So the next day, I realized that I had the capacity to reverse the damage he had done, just by very consciously and carefully doing the opposite of that he had done to me. That where he had severed something I would do the opposite, I would make connections.

I began to think about the mechanism of what he had done to me: where he had isolated me, I make friends; where he had silenced me, I express myself in every way I could think of; where he made me freeze with fear I learn to move, with grace and expression; where he had destroyed my ability to think I follow a train of thought through, in as many different directions as possible.

Then I realized that I had the capacity to turn everything he had aimed at me into something positive for myself: where there was hate, I turn it into self care for myself; where there was violence I turn that into gentle regard for myself; where there was fear I turn that into courage."

living

Yesterday I had a near death experience.

How dramatic does that sound? Pretty dramatic? Good. I was driving, almost at the church, which was where I was headed, when someone turned left, running a red light right in front of me. It is just hitting me now how lucky I was. Right before I went through that light something told me, almost audibly, "slow down." And I did. Normally I ignore those annoying little whispers telling myself I am just being silly, or I am overreacting, but yesterday I listened. I slowed down to 25 mph and when I saw the car in my path, I slammed on my brakes and barely missed them. If I had ignored that voice, and continued at my previous, legal speed of 45, I would have plowed into the side of that rather sizable SUV.

I could have died. I probably would have, if not for that little voice that told me to "slow down." Looking back, I have had a lot of close calls. I was once locked in the trunk of a car on a ninety-eight degree day in late May, and I lived. I remember realizing that I had stopped sweating. I felt cooler, and I remember thinking that if I could just go to sleep, I would feel much better, but there was that voice that told me "No Kendra, you need to stay awake, just hold on a little longer." I believe that if I had fallen asleep in the trunk of that car, I could easily have died, but I am still alive. Yesterday I could have died, but I am still alive.

I believe God knows me, I have always believed it. I believe he could have let me die yesterday, or any other day, but instead He whispered in my ear, warning me, protecting me. What's news to me (and I can't believe it never occurred to me before) is that I have a purpose. There is a reason I am still here. I am not just drudging along, alone on this rock all haphazard-like; God wants me here. Right now, in this small moment in my tiny little life, I am supposed to be here.

Part of me is not sure how to feel about this. Part of me is so exhausted with living, (the part of me that wishes for anything from going to bed and not waking up, to a fiery car crash) the part of me that thinks dying would be easier. The rest of me is in awe. For years I've asked myself questions like "Why was I saved?" "What is the reason?" "Why do I even matter?" "Why doesn't God just let me die?"

I've realized that perhaps I have been asking the wrong questions all along. I realize now that if there is a creator, and if He has a plan, and if my being alive is part of that plan, then I have a responsibility. I am supposed to accomplish something. Maybe the questions I should be asking myself are, "Who am I supposed to help?" "Whose life am I supposed to touch?" "What good can I do?"

I am supposed to be alive, I know that now, but I think more important than that, I am supposed to live.

perspective

This blog post is going to be brutally honest. Today I was awful to someone.

When I was being abused physically, I developed this hard-won ability to turn off my senses. Nothing could touch me, nothing could hurt me. I suppose that's a metaphor. I hurt, I always hurt. I made my way through the halls of my high school gingerly, skirting around people rather than pushing through the crowds to avoid unnecessary contact that would further irritate my constantly injured skin. But I could take anything that was dished at me physically, because I used the pain as fuel to do what I needed to do to stay alive. The pain was good. If I used the physical pain I was dealt to dull the emotional pain, it was like I was untouchable. Bruises didn't ache, burns and cuts didn't sting, and the mad rush of five hundred teenagers didn't phase me. When someone was hurting me on purpose, I could deal.

Now I have a dear friend who would never, ever want to hurt me. But without the intense physical pain to make the pain of emotions, of feeling feel insignificant, it's like everything hurts. Words that mean nothing harmful make me cry. Being misunderstood makes me cry. Misunderstanding makes me cry. This pain, the pain of my heart beating in my chest is sometimes so much to bear that I don't know what to do. I've never cried so hard as when this person doesn't mean to hurt me.

And so, today, in a rage, I told this friend that I could better understand him if he would just hit me. I told him that I wished he would, that then at least I would know what to feel. I told him, in essence that I would prefer abuse I could understand to him.

I have never felt more ungrateful in my life than when I said those words.

This friend means the world to me. He is understanding, patient, unwavering, a person I don't at all deserve and today I treated him like crap, and his friendship like it was worthless. All of this is to say that I am trying. I am trying so hard to act like a normal person that can have normal relationships with people, and I fail. But I am lucky. I have people who love me no matter how badly I screw up. I have friends that insist I deserve better than what I wish for myself in the heat of an angry moment. I have faith in a gospel that teaches that the worst blunders I could possibly make can be wiped clean. And are. Today I really screwed up and I am SO grateful for the opportunity I have to learn from my mistakes.

Today

Fall is my favorite for many reasons. Not least among them: I adore the feeling of crunching leaves beneath my feet. Adore. I don't know what it is, but it comforts my obsessive compulsive bits. Crunch one under my left, have to crunch one under my right. Only it's not a HAVE to, like counting syllables or having one bite of each food left on my plate at the end, it's more like a game. Can I make the crunching feel evenly distributed between my feet? Probably not, but at least I feel tall, and powerful, as if I'm a giant crunching building after building (with no people in them of course).

Another thing I love, not completely unrelated, is the sound I make when walking on a driveway of small gravel. Not the giant rocks of a new driveway, but the small worn down pebbles of an old country road. so worn down that some of them are almost as small as the grains of dirt. If there's no one around me but Lovely, and the only thing I can hear is perhaps a breeze and the crunch crunch of the gravel, then I am so comforted. It makes me feel small and cocooned. I am safe and surrounded by happy things.

So today, when I walked Lovely and walked up the gravel driveway covered in leaves, I was in heaven. Perfectly balanced between feeling big and powerful and feeling small and safe. Perfectly balanced between the feel of the leaves and the sound of the pebbles beneath my feet. Perfectly balanced in my steps and my breathing and my emotions. For maybe just two minutes, when I walk that path, I feel like I know what it feels like to be normal, and balanced.

I hope you don't think I'm too strange for this elaborate description of such a very small thing in my day. But have i told you about that fortune cookie I got that told me "You find beauty in ordinary things. Never lose this ability."? It keeps me sane. And happy.

Writing my story before I know the ending quite often feels rather counter-intuitive. I don't know what the story is supposed to look like, how it will end and if I am doing the right things to get myself there. Or if, indeed, there is a "there."

But I think I must have a beautiful story ahead of me, because the most amazing things grow out of the ugliest places.

Today is a day for introspection.

The time stamp on these posts is always, always wrong.

I had little patience today for unkind people. My sweet egg friend said to me "you're interesting tonight." I wasn't sure what that meant, and she pointed out that when people had barely started to annoy me (speaking unkindly of others, talking to me like i was a child and making me feel stupid) I was done with them immediately. I don't get this way often, I am non-confrontational, but I think it's because all day today, as I ironed, cut, and sewed, ironed, cut and sewed, ironed, cut and sewed, I was thinking about people.

In high school, there was an extremely small number of people that I trusted with my truth. (I say it was "my truth" rather than THE truth because it was the truth as best as I understood it inside my little soul, a truth that was not as accurate as it should have been.)

It started with one friend, Kate. she was wonderful and accepting, and she believed me. In a moment of desperation, overwhelmed with the feeling of letting go of my deep, dark secret, I told a group of her friends - kids I barely knew - during a game of truth or dare what had happened to me. I then immediately got scared, and took it all back. I told these few people that was I had told them was a lie. After all, better to be a liar than a victim, and everyone already thought I was a liar, so no big right?

I cannot even imagine the pain I caused these people, not to mention the pain I inflicted upon myself burying the truth deeper and deeper into the infected wound that was my body and soul.

I have been searching for some words, some kind of... salve to apply to this metaphorical wound, some apology to offer these people, some way of coming to terms with the trust that I (for lack of a better word) abused. I have been searching for a way to pay restitution, and finding neither the courage, nor the magic words, the best I can do is an attempt from now on at complete honesty.

If this ends up being a letter to myself, that's fine. If any, or all of those young people who took me into their circle of truth or dare, somehow happen to read this, that's okay too. No more lies. No more hiding. What happened, happened. There is no taking it back this time, no pretending it didn't.

1. I was abused by some of my classmates. 2. I reached out to people for help and then I pushed them away.

I can't change these facts. What i CAN change is where i go from here. I can use what I've experienced to motivate myself to go forward with kindness. I choose to be honest. I choose to look for the good in every situation, and I choose to have no patience for the unkind. That is all I can manage today.

She'll Be A Morning Shadow

As I am starting this entry, it is 11:11 pm on October the 22nd. When I finish it (more than likely) it will be October 23rd. October the 23rd, 2010. In 49 minutes it will have been one year since I was raped in a grocery store bathroom by someone I knew.

My life took a sharp swerve that night. In some ways, the girl I was that day, and the girl I am today are not so different. Our faces are the same, our core beliefs, our hidden talents are shared, but she had something that I can no longer afford, and that is the luxury of denial.

This one incident brought up more painful memories than I can share in good conscience here and now. I haven't taken a picture of myself once this year. Making art is painful now. There are some days when I can't bring myself to get out of bed. The nightmares kill me. Last night, I didn't sleep at all. I tossed and turned all night, my mind filled with visions of violence, black and white, and slow, with mouths moving, trying to yell, scream, cry, argue, but no sound coming out. Like an old silent movie.

I often wonder if people notice that because of this, I walk around in a fog. Sometimes I feel like they must be able to see that my nightmares walk beside me, but no one says anything. In fact, the people closest to me have noticed a steady change in me from that night, and not for the poorer. It's hard for me to see sometimes how relatively normal I am when I feel such a wreck, but as a line from one of my favorite songs goes "you've come far, and though you're far from the end, you don't mind where you are, cuz you know where you've been."

Today I stand as a woman who has taken only the first few steps in a lifelong journey, but I go forward with the knowledge that, although there may be no real end to this story, there is something better to look forward to. I also press on with the knowledge that I no longer have to walk alone.